Faculty Research

The Burkle Center funds faculty research working groups and faculty research projects led by UCLA faculty in support of the study and analysis of significant questions of international policy and politics.

Faculty Research Working Group activities can take various forms, such as a series of roundtables, reading groups, speaker symposia or workshops centered on a theme.

Faculty research project grants are seed grants designed to jump start major grant proposals in the realm of international relations, U.S. foreign policy, and issues of global cooperation and conflict.

All research themes must address a topic or topics related to international relations, U.S. foreign policy, and/or issues of global cooperation and conflict.

2014-2015 Projects

Colonial Career Paths

Research Project: A very successful strand of the economics literature has emphasized both the importance of institutions for economic development and the importance of historical colonialism as a source of variation that helps us identify the causal long run effect of institutions.

Concrete Plan: Implicit in all this research are ideas about colonizers’ motives and actions. Yet, we have no actual quantitative evidence on these motives. We aim to quantify one important dimension of colonizers’ actions, the promotion decisions for colonial staff, and to use colonial career paths to quantitatively assess the colonial administration’s motives. The idea is simple: to assess the ordinal and cardinal rankings of (vertically) different positions and (horizontally) different colonies, and to use this to assess what actions and outcomes were most rewarded by the colonial administration.

2013-14 Projects

Strategic (Non)Participation in International Organizations

Research Project: International organizations aspire to egalitarian decision-making among sovereign states. Yet powerful states often drive decisions, while weaker states are excluded from participation. This research project, which is jointly undertaken with Krzysztof J. Pelc of McGill University, examines the politics of participation within international organizations. We examine participation from the perspective of both powerful and weak states. First, we argue the powerful states that expect to lose within technocratic institutions, such as courts and bureaucracies, seek to politicize issues by broadening participation, while those that benefit from technocratic institutions seek to limit participation by weaker states. Second, we argue that sometimes exclusionary decision-making can benefit those very states that are excluded from participation. Because broader participation hinders dispute settlement, observed exclusion may reflect rational decisions by weak states not to participate, rather than formal or informal constraints on participation. This multifaceted project will use formal, quantitative, and qualitative methods to examine strategic participation in World Trade Organization dispute settlement and rule-making, European Union regulation, and sovereign debt negotiations.

Research Project: Although migration is clearly a domestic issue, it is driven by cross-border social networks; it therefore inherently produces international spillovers – remittances, cross-border communication and travel, diaspora politics, as well as homeland-oriented immigrant philanthropy – that in turn trigger responses from home countries, seeking to influence the emigrants and access their resources. During 2013-14, the Program in International Migration will continue its bi-weekly program of speakers, with plans to once again assemble an interdisciplinary, international group. Invited speakers in 2013–14 are expected to address international refugee protection, comparative immigration policy making, remittances, social networks and migration, and transnational families, among other topics. The bi-weekly series will be complemented by a one-day workshop per quarter. In fall quarter 2013, the one–day workshop will be day–long conference to be held at UCLA in partnership with Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF) (Tijuana). (We anticipate a similar, UCLA day at COLEF, to be scheduled for 2014–15.) The Program is also planning a conference to be held at Sciences Po in Paris in 2014, which will include UCLA students and faculty, as well as counterparts from Europe. The Paris conference is the second in a series of planned events that commenced in March 2012 with an international, interdisciplinary graduate student conference at UCLA, on Migration, Ethnicity, and Urban Change, organized in cooperation with Sciences Po (Paris) and the Berlin Graduate School for Social Science.

Understanding Fuel Price Shocks

Research Project: Many news reports suggest that increases in the price of fuel can trigger protests, and even threaten the stability of governments. Our project seeks to collect original data on monthly fuel prices in all countries to statistically explore this hypothesis. We also hope to clarify the conditions under which governments have successfully removed fuel subsidies, without triggering protests. This issue has important economic, political, and environmental implications for many countries.

2012-13 Projects

British Colonies and the ‘First’ Globalization

Research Project: This project seeks to collect detailed annual data on British colonies during the First Globalization from the mid-19th century up to WWI. From the early 19th century, British colonial authorities started collecting amazingly detailed data for each of their colonies, often at the parish-level. A particular emphasis was placed on trade statistics because these constituted the main source of local tax revenues. This data-source, located at the British National Archives and the British Library in London, has never been systematically digitized or used for a large-scale comparative study. This data will therefore both generate original research and exert a positive externality on the profession by making available a very large new data-set which sheds completely new light on a large portion of the 19th global trading world. Understanding how the benefits from globalization can be spread broadly so that they can be harnessed to generate a virtuous cycle in which trade, innovation and economic development become mutually reinforcing is today more relevant than ever.

Diplomatic Calculus: How States Draw Conclusions about Each Others’ Future Behavior

Robert Trager, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science

Research project: This project focuses on the creation of a new dataset of state inferences about the future behavior and intentions of other states, and the development of grant proposals for the National Science Foundation, the European Research Council and other funding organizations. In the international relations field, no such dataset of inference currently exists despite the centrality of the question of how states draw inferences about each others’ future behavior. The dataset will draw on British inferences from 1854 to 1914, a period that saw many varying international contexts thus providing a unique resource for international relations scholars. Analysis of this data will be used in Trager’s book project, Diplomatic Calculus in Anarchy.

Status: Although migration is clearly a domestic issue, it is driven by cross-border social networks; it therefore inherently produces international spillovers – remittances, cross-border communication and travel, diaspora politics, as well as homeland-oriented immigrant philanthropy – that in turn trigger responses from home countries, seeking to influence the emigrants and access their resources. During 2012-13, the Migration Study Group will continue its bi-weekly program of speakers, with plans to once again assemble an interdisciplinary group as well as invite international speakers. The bi-weekly series will be complemented with a one-day workshop per quarter. Furthermore, the Group will cosponsor a small interdisciplinary, international conference on “A Century of Transnationalism: Immigrants and their Homelands,” with the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris.

2011-12 Projects

The Effectiveness of Eco-Labels: An International Perspective

Magali Delmas, Professor of Management, UCLA Institute of the Environment & the Anderson School of Management

Research Project: The difficulty to solve environmental problems has generated the search for alternative governance mechanisms that involve a multitude of actors and organizations. A potentially effective option relates to disclosing information aimed at market actors and civil society via eco-labels. The goal of eco-labels is to elicit increased demand for products perceived as environmentally favorable. This research seeks to uncover the factors that facilitate or hamper the success of eco-labels, whether these factors differ in Europe and in the United States and how to predict the successful adoption of new eco-labels.

Cyberspace, The Globalization of Hinduism, and Protocols of Citizenship in the Digital Age

Vinay Lal, Associate Professor, Department of History

Research Project: This project is positioned within the framework of the globalization of religion under conditions of modernity and India’s changing role in world politics. It will focus on the politics of democracy and authoritarianism in cyberspace, including the internet’s role in expanding and mobilizing both nationalist Hindus and their secular opponents within the Indian diaspora. It will also explore the transformation of Hinduism as it becomes a global faith, with an emphasis on the worldview of Indian American Hindus in particular.

Oil & Unbalanced Globalization

Michael Ross, Professor, Department of Political Science

Research Project: This research tries to explain the paradoxical role of the oil-exporting countries in the international system. Economically, these states are highly globalized: they are the source of the world’s single most valuable commodity; they tend to be highly tradedependent; and they are often major capital importers or exporters. Yet politically, they are strikingly unglobalized: they are much less likely than other states to sign major treaties or preferential trade agreements; they are atypically prone to expropriating foreign companies; and they often defy global norms. The researchers argue that this combination of features – high levels of economic integration, combined with low levels of political integration – makes the oil producers a distinctive, and often disruptive, force in the international system.

Diplomatic Calculus: How States Draw Conclusions about Each Others’ Future Behavior

Robert Trager, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science

Research project: This project focuses on the creation of a new dataset of state inferences about the future behavior and intentions of other states, and the development of grant proposals for the National Science Foundation, the European Research Council and other funding organizations. In the international relations field, no such dataset of inference currently exists despite the centrality of the question of how states draw inferences about each others’ future behavior. The dataset will draw on British inferences from 1854 to 1914, a period that saw many varying international contexts thus providing a unique resource for international relations scholars. Analysis of this data will be used in Trager’s book project, Diplomatic Calculus in Anarchy.

Status: In recent years, the field of American Studies has turned to the history of the US empire and its transoceanic reach into the Pacific, a vital space for testing US foreign policy. This project focuses on the history of the “Pacific Theatre” during World War II and seeks to highlight multiple methodologies of approaching the complex social, political, environmental, and cultural implications of Pacific Island militarization. How have Pacific Islanders represented and engaged the long history of militarization? Drawing from different disciplinary backgrounds, the three principal investigators held the Legacies of Pacific Island Militarization Workshop on April 18, 2011 in UCLA’s Royce Hall. The workshop was so successful that the group also held a second meeting in August 2011 with local participants to prepare their essays for an edited volume of a journal. (to be determined).

Status: Although migration is clearly a domestic issue, it is driven by cross-border social networks; it therefore inherently produces international spillovers – remittances, cross-border communication and travel, diaspora politics, as well as homeland-oriented immigrant philanthropy – that in turn trigger responses from home countries, seeking to influence the emigrants and access their resources. During 2010-11, the Migration Study Group continued its bi-weekly program of speakers, and once again assembled an interdisciplinary group as well as invited international speakers. The bi-weekly series was complemented with a one-day workshop per quarter. The Group continues to explore the possibility of at least one joint activity with the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana, and via the Colegio, other institutions in Mexico.

2008-10 Project

Susanne Lohmann, Professor, Department of Political Science (Working Group Chair); Yasmin Kafai, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education and Information Systems; Linda Sax, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education and Information Systems; and Sally Blower, Professor, David Geffen School of Medicine.

Status: On March 11 - 14, 2009, Susanne Lohmann presented her research findings at the conference, "The Global Arc of Justice: Sexual Orientation Law Around the World." On May 12, 2009, Lohmann again presented her research findings at UCLA's Royce Hall's Room 314. The first purpose of her research is to argue that higher education not only creates human capital but it also shapes a people’s collective mindset. Worldwide, men tend to study “useful” subjects like engineering, computer science, and business, which have the potential to create human capital and economic growth. Women tend to self-select into the humanities and social sciences, which human-capital theorists like to write off as “useless” but which actually serve to modernize people’s mindsets. On February 8, 2010, Susanne Lohman brought William Clark of UC San Diego to campus to speak on "Being Academic."

Status: On April 10th the Faculty Working Group participants will hold a Symposium on Women in Conflict Zones at the UCLA Faculty Center which will feature a keynote/public lecture by Shahrazad Mojab of the University of Toronto, followed by a panel and a workshop designed to explore various conflict zones (e.g., Palestine, Iran (Kurds), Algeria, Sudan, Mexico, Lebanon, Cuba, Eritrea, Tunisia, Philippines, Rwanda/Congo, South Africa, and the United States, where individuals may be actors, warriors, victims, perpetrators, survivors, collaborators, icons or symbols and may be ambivalent, complicit, and have complicated relationships to their adversaries.